Revellers paint the town red in tomato festival
Tens of thousands of revellers spattered each other with juicy, red tomatoes today in one of Spain’s most popular summer festivals – La Tomatina.
Some 40,000 people, fuelled by wine and beer, hurled and kicked hundreds of thousands of tomatoes around the streets of Bunol, covering each other and the tiny village in tomato juice and pulp during the event.
Within an hour, the buildings were drenched, and partygoers were sliding around tomato-slicked streets.
The tomatoes, some 220,460lbs bought by town hall, were then hosed off the streets and buildings.
Some people living near the festival put up plastic sheets to protect their building facades. Others dumped buckets of water from balconies overhead, turning the downtown tomato mash into soup.
“People receive advice before the fight begins, but as far as possible, people are sensible about not hurting each other,” local councillor Pilar Garrigues said.
“Here you come dressed in white, and you have to leave in red after having lots of fun. That’s what the Tomatina is all about,” Garrigues said.
The tomato fight in Bunol, 25 miles north of Valencia on Spain’s east coast, each year draws tens of thousands of revellers from around Spain and abroad, including from countries as far as Japan, Australia and the US.
Local lore says the festival, held on the last Wednesday of every August, started in the 1940s when kids started throwing their lunches at each other one day in a downtown square. They met again the following year, this time pelting passers-by as well, and thus the tradition was born.
